Bloodsoaked passes through unfamiliar spaces, taking its readers to the heart of Iran and the Middle East, where love and life and even death are influenced by war, religion, and, of course, a cursed history.
By combining Christian aesthetics with Iranian political history and through references to the history of the Middle East in early 1980s, the author has created an atmosphere that could be attractive for both Western and Eastern audiences.
Bloodsoaked is one of the most read novels in the past few months in Iran. The novel has rightly been regarded by Iranian critics as a "Modem Gothic".
Mohsen Meftah, a graduate student at the University of Tehran, earns his life by following in his father's footstep and making up for the missed prayers and fasts on behalf of deceased Muslims. The story begins on an autumn day when Mohsen is scheduled to visit the graves of five brothers and perform their mother's vow. And so his life gets entangled with the story of the five brothers who grew up in an old neighborhood in Tehran, next to an Armenian Apostolic Church. With the onset of the Islamic Revolution, the lives of these brothers change forever in October 1981. Nasser, the eldest brother, goes to Isfahan with his beloved, Maryam, whose father was executed after the revolution. A Catholic collector has tempted her to excavate some sacred antiquities from a church in Isfahan in turn for a Vatican visa for herself and Nasser. But this excavation turns out to be completely different from what they have imagined. Massoud is a sniper in the Iran-Iraq War, who shoots from a church tower to prevent Iraqi forces from entering the city. He is a brave young man whose shocking destiny is tied up with the fate of the left women in a war-torn city. Mansour, the third brother, is a photographer who has taken photos from the executions and trials in Revolutionary Tribunals. Taking pictures of the execution of a notorious prostitute changes his life and drags him to Beirut. There he falls in love with a Maronite nun, Maria. But politics and religious fanaticism shape a different destiny for them. Mahmoud falls in love with a communist girl and follows her to Mashhad, so that they can flee to the Soviet Union together. And the fate of Tahir, their six-year-old brother, is tied to Tehran and St. Marry Church in their neighborhood. Mohsen says prayers over all these graves, but why they all have remained empty after so many years?
